‘At the time of the next election, I’ll be 67 or 68, and I
believe that is simply too old to lead a party into government.’ So said Mr
Michael Howard, leader of the Conservatives, after their third consecutive loss
to Labour in the recent British General Election.

If the other Mr Howard (John – Prime Minister of Australia)
had been listening, it would have been interesting to know his response. As the
second longest serving Australian PM, he will be turning 66 this year and, as
has happened in each of his terms of office, the media debate has once again
cranked into gear as to whether or not he will see the current term out or hand
over to his Treasurer.

Had other leaders shared Michael Howard’s belief, Churchill
would never have taken office a second time at 76 and Reagan would have
continued to bask in the Californian sunshine at the age of 69. The Petrine
succession would also have looked very different. Of the last 51 popes since
1500, 18 of them took office either at or older than 67. All but eight of them
finished office at or over that age.

It was widely, and rightly said, that in continuing in office
John Paul II showed not only man’s worth in sickness, but also in age. It could
also be argued that to have stepped down earlier would not have led to the world
‘standing still’ for his funeral. Certainly it would have been newsworthy, but
grief may not have been the same because lives would have moved on.

Ageing populations

Australia, like much of the western world, is having to face
the reality of ageing. Soon there will be fewer people of working age supporting
an ever-increasing body of retirees. Government forecasts here predict that the
over 65s will have doubled to 25% of the total population in just 40 years. The
UK predictions are that a change of the ratio of workers to pensioners will have
moved from 5:1 one hundred years ago to 1:1 very soon.

Retirement villages and nursing homes are big business here,
and for some Anglican dioceses, arguably more profitable than schooling! Support
and care for the residents mirrors the earlier quoted ratios, with increasing
numbers of staff being employed from overseas.

Barry Humphries may best be known for Dame Edna and Sir Les
Patterson, but his grandfatherly character of Sandy Stone addresses with immense
pathos the realities of Australian cultural change. In Dame Edna’s Back to my
roots tour in Melbourne in 2003, Sandy Stone spoke of the nursing home (Tudor
Mews) in which his wife resided:

They’ve got a lovely team of Korean carers. They can’t speak a
word of English, but Beryl doesn’t mind that because she doesn’t like talking to
strangers. But a lot of the other old ladies who can’t speak Asian (that’s all
of them), they miss having somebody to talk to when the rellies (relatives) stop
coming – that’s after a couple of weeks.

What Sandy recognizes in the nursing home is replicated in so
many parts of the Western Church, which itself has an ageing workforce.
Religious houses and presbyteries are often being filled from Asia or Africa,
not necessarily to minister to their own native communities. The local Roman
Catholic church in Fitzroy, for example, is soon to have a Lebanese priest where
there is mainly a Vietnamese congregation.

The value of age

Introducing the prophetess Anna in the temple, St Luke cannot
emphasize her age enough! Informing us that she was ‘well on in years,’ he
confirms, ‘Her days of girlhood (were) over.’ If we have not already accepted
the point, he stresses, ‘She had been married for seven years before becoming a
widow. She was now eighty-four years old.’

Yet Anna in her faithfulness of fasting and prayer recognized
the one to whom all would look forwards to deliverance. She, indeed, began her
recognition of the Christ at the age John Paul II was when he finished his
earthly ministry for the same Lord.

The British Mr Howard has decidedwhat is ‘too old’. The
Australian Mr Howard shows no sign of giving into age, but appears to enjoy his
position more each year. The true value of age is not so much in who can and
cannot continue with this or that job, but how effective our witness can be to
Christ regardless of age. The Prophetess Anna would not have had it any other
way.

On April 2, the most articulate spokesman for a ‘culture of
life,’ Pope John Paul II, passed quietly and with integrity through the gates to
larger life. A few days earlier, in a hospice in central Florida, another
Catholic Christian had been forced through those same gates by a judicial system
that appears largely to have lost its moorings to the classical and Christian
foundations that gave birth to it.

The judicially sanctioned (and enforced) starvation death of
Terri Schindler-Schiavo has revealed the uncomfortable fact that legal
positivism – the same philosophy that drove the corruption of justice in Nazi
Germany – did not perish in the rubble of the ‘Thousand-Year Reich’. It is alive
and well in many of the courts, legal systems, and organs of culture in the
western world.

This should not be surprising, for natural law jurisprudence
appears to have been reduced to minority status in the American legal and
judicial community.

The origin of law

It is important to define some terms and concepts. To the
question, ‘From where does the law originate?’ there are essentially two
answers: ‘from God’s goodness,’ or ‘from man’s will.’ The first is the classical
Judaeo-Christian answer. Irrespective of the fact that there is more than one
school of thought concerning natural and divine law and the relationship between
them, it is an answer that commits the orthodox Christian to some form of
natural law jurisprudence.

The second answer is that given by the two basic forms of
humanist philosophy: utilitarianism, which defines justice as that which
benefits the greatest number of people, and positivism, which, because it
implicitly or explicitly denies the possibility of knowing objective truth,
defines justice as that which is willed by the lawgiving authority – whether
that be monarchic, democratic, aristocratic or judicial.

While both utilitarianism and positivism repose the authority
of the law in the will of the lawgiver, rather than in its conformity to the
objective goodness of the Creator, it is positivism that has proved the more
dangerous, not least because of its ability easily to assume the more humane
colouration of utilitarianism.

The fact remains, however, that the fundamental assumption of
both positivism and utilitarianism is one that would have been recognized and
endorsed by every blood-drenched tyrant of the centuries past. Mao Zedong
famously put it this way: ‘Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.’
Might makes right.

Dangers of ‘neutrality’

The American legal system has assumed what is often advertised
as a ‘values neutral’ approach. People are not supposed to allow their allegedly
‘private’ convictions about the nature of reality influence their decisions in
the public arena. If they do, they are seen as a threat to the social and
political order, as persons trying to ‘impose their values’ on an unwilling body
politic.

This is functional atheism. The existence of a transcendent
and immanent God, even if real, is considered a matter for a privatized realm of
values, which is held to have no genuine or desirable connection with the ‘real
world’ of facts. It is also an exercise in self-deception, for since man is in
his nature meant to worship, if he denies and will not worship the true God, the
God who was made man through whom alone genuine humanity is achieved – he will
worship idols of his own devising. And as a consequence of his idolatry – for we
become what we worship – he will become less than human.

Such a viewpoint produces what C.S. Lewis called ‘men without
chests’; men who, like the nominally Catholic Supreme Court Justice (Kennedy in
Lawrence v. Texas) can write nonsense about liberty being ‘the right to define
one’s own concept of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human
life.’ At its worst, it produces nice men who love their wives, their dogs and
their children but who, when at work, can condone or even order actions which
violate the dignity and take the lives of innocents.

Back to our roots

All this the long agony of Terri Schindler-Schiavo brought
into focus. It is the task of Catholic Christians and all others who stand with
them to sharpen that awareness and carry it into socially transformative action.

It might just be that in God’s providence, the very public but
very different passings of Terri Schindler-Schiavo and of John Paul II will
serve both as incentive and encouragement for Christians, who are determined not
simply to retain a toehold in contemporary American culture, but to return to
what the late Russell Kirk called the roots of American order – roots which are
sunk deep in a classical vision of justice and good government, baptized with
the biblical doctrine of man before God.

It is too soon, perhaps, to tell if this will happen. But
whilst Ivan Karamazov was surely right that ‘if God does not exist, everything
is permitted,’ the Archangel Gabriel was more so when he told the Blessed Virgin
Mary, ‘with God, nothing shall be impossible.’ The dry bones of American
jurisprudence may yet live.

Sam Edwards

Canada

New Westminster cull

Whilst the Anglican Communion as a whole has been considering
the implications of the Windsor Report, here in Canada some of the actions which
occasioned it have been having local and particular consequences. A group of
mostly evangelical parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster dissociated itself
from the decision of the diocesan synod to permit the blessing of same sex
unions. Though wishing to continue with an Anglican identity and in communion
with other provinces, the parishes felt that they could not remain as
constituent parts of a diocese which had flouted the clear teaching of the last
Lambeth Conference.

As in the United States, dispute about the ownership of
property has been an important element in their discussions with the bishop and
the diocese. As the Canadian House of Bishops was pondering its response to
Windsor, things came to a head.

Legal battle too costly

To avoid a drawn-out and costly legal battle, the priests and
parishioners of two parishes in the Diocese of New Westminster, who left the
Anglican Church of Canada in 2002, announced that they would vacate the church
buildings they currently occupy and turn them over to the diocese by May 31.

In early March, George Cadman, diocesan chief legal officer,
had served notices to the parishes through their lawyer, Bob Kuhn, asking them
to ‘deliver up possession’ of the buildings by April 1 or be faced with court
proceedings. The diocese has maintained that the church buildings ‘historically’
belong to the Canadian Anglican church for its ministry in New Westminster.

‘It’s not what we imagined or what we would have wanted, but
we just want to be gracious and we believe God will bless us,’ said The Revd Ed
Hird, former Rector of St Simon’s, Deep Cove, North Vancouver, who left the
diocese and later formed the Anglican Communion in Canada (ACiC) along with The
Revd Barclay Mayo, former Rector of St Andrew’s, Pender Harbour.

The eviction notice had ‘upped the stakes,’ said Mr Hird. ‘Our
lawyer carefully laid out the options, and even if we have a strong legal case
for retention, because we have the title deed and beneficial ownership, the
reality is that a legal battle would have been costly.’

Gracious action

He said parishioners voted during Holy Week to turn over the
properties. ‘The diocese has deep pockets and we’re just an ordinary
congregation. It’s totally unjust but it’s not worth it,’ he said. ‘We want to
go on with our ministry. We forgive (diocesan bishop) Michael Ingham for
usurping our property. But the church is the people; he hasn’t taken the church
away from us, it’s only the property.’

Still, he added, parishioners ‘have an emotional attachment’
to St Simon’s, which was built by a youth group in 1949. ‘It’s an old shack,
it’s not worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it has sentimental value.’

Reacting to the parishes’ decision, Mr Cadman said, ‘I’m just
pleased to see that there won’t be any legal proceedings.’ Diocesan spokesperson
Neale Adams said, ‘It’s a positive thing. We’ve always hoped it could be settled
without unnecessary expense on anyone’s part.’

Hird said all worship at his church would be at Lions Gate
Christian Academy beginning June 5. He said they started using that facility for
one of their services last December. ‘We’re a growing church,’ he said.

Former parishioners of St Andrew’s, who now call their parish
Christ the Redeemer Church, Pender Harbour, will also move, June 5, to the
Pender Harbour School of Music, Madeira Park.

Diocesan response

In a letter to all diocesan clergy and members of the diocesan
council, Bishop Ingham explained that the two priests had already ‘abandoned’
their ministry and had formed ‘privately incorporated societies.’

Bishop Ingham added that, ‘There will no doubt be accusations
of persecution and victimization levelled against the diocese for these
actions.’ But he urged members of his diocese to remember that, ‘No priest or
lay person has been asked to act against their conscience in matters of faith,
that all attempts at reconciliation by the diocese have been repudiated, and
that the clergy and laity involved have voluntarily withdrawn themselves from
the Anglican Church of Canada.’

Mr Hird and Mr Mayo and members of their parishes were among
those who walked out of a diocesan synod after it voted to allow same-sex
blessings in 2002. Though the diocese had voted in favour of the blessings two
times earlier, it was only in 2002 that Bishop Ingham gave his consent to the
vote. He said they would only be authorized by priests who in conscience could
perform them and that they would be performed only in parishes where a majority
of the membership had voted to be a place of blessings.

Meanwhile, the diocesan synod met from May 13-14, to discuss,
among other business, the request made by Primates of the Anglican Communion,
and the recommendation made by the Lambeth Commission on Communion, for a
moratorium on same-sex blessings.

It was announced that the Panel of Reference, for parishes in
dispute with their diocesan bishop on such matters, which was requested by the
Primates’ Meeting, had been set up by the Archbishop of Canterbury and was to be
chaired by Archbishop Peter Carnley. ‘That,’ said Mr Hird ‘is a lot too late for
us.’